~ I'm just a WYSIWYG kind of guy … who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Monthly Archives: August 2015

I don’t often reblog my own stuff…in fact this post is the first post of mine that I have reblogged, simply because, in the run up to the election of the Labour Party Leadership, all the candidates, with the exception of Mr Jeremy Corbyn, have talked about solving the Housing crisis that is afflicting the UK, in terms of building more ‘Affordable’ housing. By that they mean houses (or rabbit hutches ) for people to buy or ‘Buy to Let’.

Only My Corbyn, who is at present, winning the race admirably, has mentioned, like a good Socialist, that the way to solve the housing crisis is for central government to fund a massive build of Council Housing…or Social Housing, as it is now known. WELL DONE MR CORBYN !! at least one of the candidates is listening to the electorate.

It has just stirred up the passion I have for a return to the Old Labour party with a social conscience….so, a reblog of earlier words ….

I can well remember the day , many years ago when, as a small boy, I witnessed the joy of my parents as we moved out of our private rented house and took delivery of a brand new, never been lived in by anyone else, Council house…24, Lowedges Drive, Sheffield 8….it had a luxurious bathroom with a wash hand basin, Bath and a toilet…three spacious bedrooms, modern kitchen and a huge back garden. It even had a brick built flowerpot on the front of the house. I thought it was quite ‘posh’. It was a brand new housing estate with country side at the bottom of the road. We had ‘arrived’. We had a relatively good life there..grew up ..moved on to different areas of Sheffield, always in a council rented property….more time passed and in 1979, a dark cloud passed over the United Kingdom. Her name was ‘Margaret Hilda Thatcher’…a name that most working class people choke on because of her governments relentless attacks on workers and their rights. Aside from her single handed destruction of the working man’s trade unions, which could fight for the worker’s rights and conditions of employment, one of the most harmful things she ever did was to make it the Tory party policy to allow Council house tenants to purchase the houses they rented from the councils where they lived. She talked a lot about the fact that an ‘Englishman’s home is his castle’, people had the right to purchase the council houses at a discounted price and this gave way to the lie that if you owned your own house you were in effect, middle class and you had dragged yourself up from the working class…you were an owner of ‘property’.

Many people fell for this without realising what effect the practice of buying the council house stocks would have on future generations. Or, if they did realise what effect it would have, they didn’t care. That attitude has been attributed directly to the Thatcher ideology of me, me, me, and greed is good…up yours Jack, I’m alright !!….well…we are reaping the benefits of that Tory policy in this present day and age with a chronic shortage of housing stock and massive waiting lists of people who cannot afford to buy a house…and that number grows day by day. Many people, of all ages are forced into the private housing market, where landlords supply houses at high rents for their own profit, and we all know how it works don’t we ?…no repairs on the houses means more profit, no improvements means more profit and we finish up living in virtual squalor for the benefit of a profit seeking landlord. Unless of course you manage to get a benevolent landlord with a bit of a social conscience …and finding one of those is like trying to find rocking horse droppings !!!

Decent living accommodation provided by the people for the people is a social necessity and not a frivolous product of a more socially oriented society of a bygone age. Young people who are newly married and starting out on their lives, people on a low income, the unemployed who can’t find money for a deposit, let alone a mortgage, people who are pensioners and can’t afford a mortgage….the list of people disenfranchised from a decent standard of living by the government, and not only governments of a blue hue either…was it not LORD (that’s a laugh for a so called socialist, is it not?) Prescot, who sanctioned the wholesale demolition of thousands of council properties…then quickly shelved the plans to build ‘Affordable Housing’ to replace them???? The Affordable housing he refers to, is of course, housing for SALE, not rentable from the Council, but for sale, and the small percentage of housing not for sale is owned by ‘Housing associations’….The choice is stark is it not, for people who can’t afford, for whatever reason, to purchase a dwelling to live in…either pay a private landlord a high rent and rely on an ever dwindling public fund to provide rent and council tax relief, or tough it out and wait for another 15-20 years for a council house…….OR…..stop fighting illegal wars, and unwinnable wars which are costing the tax payers countless millions and invest in a public works program to build decent housing for people to rent off their local councils…problem solved for generations to come….And some people don’t like Socialism ?????….why the hell not?

I would imagine there will be some very anti comments to this post from people of a differing political standpoint…well bring it on !!…just remember what I said in the blurb about the Red Box…these are MY views and it matters not a jot that you disagree with them, what does matter, is that we have a platform on which to disagree and debate these issues……….. This is a very important issue for me and so I needed to shout about it…stay safe people.

A few housing facts to back up my claims..(information taken from Charitable groups and Housing charities)

7.7 million homes in England fail to meet the government’s Decent Homes Standard

1.6 million children in Britain live in overcrowded, temporary or run down accomodation

The average weekly rent in 2009-10 was £156 for private renters and £75 for social renters

Almost 50% of local housing allowance claimnents face rent shortfalls-averaging £100 per month

across LONDON homelessness is up by 27.4%

4 million children live in poverty after housing costs have been paid

33% of private renters had lived in their homes for less that 1 year

Birmingham..highest number of homeless people , 925 households

8550 households are homeless because their short lease came to an end.

37% annual increase in number of people being housed in bed and breakfast accommodation

Housing affordability measures show that housing is unaffordable in ALL 33 UK regions

….that my Blog and I, have been kindly nominated for the prestigious LIEBSTER AWARD by the most amazing writer/Blogger…DARKWRITER11 , a young man who has a lot to say with the bonus of his words being relevant and interesting … an interesting blog title as well !!…Thank you mon ami for the nomination, I will strive to live up to your expectations…

LiebsterAward

Rules

Once you are nominated, make a post thanking and linking the person who nominated you.
Include the Liebster Award sticker in the post too.
Nominate 5 -10 other bloggers who you feel are worthy of this award. Let them know they have been nominated by commenting on one of their posts. You can also nominate the person who nominated you.
Ensure all of these bloggers have less than 200 followers.
Answer the eleven questions asked to you by the person who nominated you, and make eleven questions of your own for your nominees or you may use the same questions.
Lastly, COPY these rules in the post.
Questions

If you could travel anywhere tomorrow, where would it be? If I could travel anywhere tomorrow I would love to visit Cuba and see it before the world catches up with it.

What is the simplest thing that makes you smile?
The simplest thing to make me smile is to see my three Grand Daughters, they fill my life with light, love and hope for the future

What do you like about your hometown?
I love the industrial heritage and the friendly people.

What is the best meal you can prepare? A Fillet of steak with fries and fresh vegWhat’s your favorite chore to do at home?
cooling the wine

What’s your favourite book?
I have two which I cannot separate into 1st and 2nd … The Lord of the Rings and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell, Both books are very different but awesome in their content

What’s the very first thing you would do if you won the lottery?
I think I would feel a tremendous relieving of pressure…then scream and/or pass out !!

What’s your favourite fruit or vegetable?
.It has got to be the humble POTATO , so versatile and as far as fruit goes…strawberries.

How many times have you fallen in love?
Three times…my first puppy love…my first serious teenage love and then I met my wife…end of contest.

What was your favorite game or toy as a child?
I didn’t have many toys whilst growing up but my favourite toy was a Meccano construction set.

What’s your favourite beverage?
Favourite beverage has got to be a nice cup of Tea, milk in first !! closely followed by a pint of best English Bitter (real ale)

With these 11 questions posed to my Nominees,

your 11 questions are as follows ;

1/ Who or what inspired you to write books/blogs ?

2/ If there is one event in world history you could change, what would it be ?

3/ Staying with world history, what is the time period you would most like to live in ?

4/ If there is one sport you can excel at above all others, which would it be ?

5/ If you could invite one of the worlds most famous philosophers to dine with you, who would it be ?

6/ If you were a character in George Orwell’s ‘ANIMAL FARM’ which one would you be ?

7/ What is your all time favourite film ?

8/ What is your signature dish/favourite meal?

9/ What is your favourite poem?

10/ what makes you a happy person ?

11/ Where in the world (or out of it) would you most like to travel to?

Just cut and paste the questions into your blog entry and answer them

I would like to nominate the following bloggers:

First blogger I nominate is Kaitlyn … Short story writer and poet who bares her soul in words…eminently readable

second blogger I nominate is Sandy over at Scribbles and musings of an introvert , I wouldn’t describe her as an introvert as she is such a busy woman who does an excellent eclectic blog and has a very wide range of interests/passions. Well worth a visit.

Third blogger to be nominated is Martin Upfold with his blog focusing on his life with Bi-Polar disorder … and his most excellent photography … very insightful reading as he bares his soul in telling of his daily struggle. He is a new blogger and I think this award nomination may be the fillip he needs to encourage him to write on a regular basis.

Fourth Blogger is Betsy with her blog entitled Granny with a blog a seemingly ordinary woman who is full of words, stories and love. Betsy provides an anything but ordinary blog which is well written and relevant … give her some encouragement to write some more by visiting and commenting.

Fifth blogger is SUSAN GUTTERMAN and her Blog MUSIN’ WITH SUSAN…she actually has three, yes THREE blogs on the go, one of which showcases her brilliant photography

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I read this eloquent post this morning and it brought to mind the politically naive people who comment on, indeed laugh at and insult my principled belief system when it comes to politics…I must admit, I couldn’t express my views as eloquently as the person who wrote this piece so I took the easy way out and re blogged the whole article. To my mind, no person with a gram of ‘social conscience’ or an ounce of compassion can put forward any firm argument against the principles that Mr Corbyn and Socialists around the world hold dear….me included.

I have got my Tin hat on ready for the Tory driven, media supported drivel that will surely follow these words…so bring it on brethren …the word “commie’ will bounce of my tin hat without injury to my brain and the words, ‘looney left’ will just make me laugh at your naivety …Anyway enjoy this read and ‘Keep the red flag flying High’…Comrades.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, it was perfectly respectable to call oneself a socialist. It was a badge that one might wear with pride alongside the likes of Albert Einstein, George Orwell and Bertrand Russell. Nowadays, for reasons we’ll come to in a moment, to call oneself a socialist is to risk being perceived as some sort of cartoon amalgam of Arthur Scargill, Wolfie Smith, Derek Hatton, and Rik from The Young Ones. I have a neighbour who thinks it hilarious to tell people as a matter of routine that I am a fan of Joseph Stalin. Happily, I know that you’re not that stupid, so here goes.

I am a socialist. By that I mean that I believe in the socialism of Bevan and Beveridge, the socialism that gave us nationalised utilities, the NHS and the welfare state. Over the past couple of decades, since…

Today is the 67th anniversary of my birth. I’ve had lots of cards (well,10) to celebrate this milestone, and been overwhelmed by messages of congratulations, love and good wishes….and the odd present (thank you mum). Mainly coming through the medium of Face Book and SMS. Does this mark the beginning of the end for birthday cards ?

One of my earliest memories is my first day at infant school and making friends with another young boy called Malcolm Scholey (where are you now Malcolm ??) that would be in 1952. The shame is, I have no memories of Malcolm after that day !! I got my thinking cap on and tried to remember the world events that had an effect on me from that earliest of memories….so here goes…

1956 … I remember people talking about ‘the war to come’..it was the Suez Crisis, when Britain and France invaded Egypt to wrest control of the Suez from the Egyptians who had just Nationalised it….I also remember very vividly the Hungarian uprising andseeing the graphic pictures of hundreds of dead Hungarian troops laying in the snow.

1957 … Sputnik and the wonder of ‘Beeps’ from space. The beginning of the space age proper….I was already a big fan of ‘Dan Dare’…

1958 … The year the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) was formed amidst the real fears of a nuclear holocaust … I became a supporter and proudly wore the badge, getting into trouble at school for refusing to take it off !!

1960 … The ‘Sharpeville Massacre‘… in South Africa. I was horrified at the treatment of the Black population in S.Africa…it was my introduction to Racism and Apartheid.

1961 … The Berlin Wall … what a shock that was, and afterwards, for years seeing young people shot to death for trying to escape to the West. The Cold War got really icy after the wall went up. At the other end of the scale, made possible by the same people who shot the ones trying to get to the west, who can forget the wonder of the first man to orbit the Earth in space…YURI GAGARIN … The space race was on !!!

Nikita Khrushchev

1962 … Was a very scary year !!! … people were walking round looking up to the skies, looking for Soviet Bombers and ICBM’s during the ‘CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS’ … if ever the war we all dreaded was going to happen, it should have happened then when the Soviet Union tried to install nuclear missiles in bases on the island of Cuba. Thank God Kennedy called Nikita Khrushchev’s bluff and Khrushchev backed down.

1963 … I remember having tingles up my spine when I heard Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech … It was around this time that, like the ‘Sharpeville massacre in South Africa, the black people in the Southern states were being badly mistreated and even killed by white’s who still regarded them as slaves and who didn’t deserve the rights other human beings had. That affected me badly, and I can still recall the news film of black demonstrators being whipped, beaten and attacked by police dogs when they were on a peaceful Civil rights march. Horrendous !! The assassination of John F Kennedy … was another shock to the system. They do say that everyone can remember where they were when that news broke. To my mind, it has never been satisfactorily proven, even to this day, who was responsible for this heinous deed. TELSTAR was launched that year too.

1964 …Civil Rights act passed in the USA … nothing much changed, the hatred was still there as far as I could see from the newsreels. I really thought it would make a big difference…maybe me being a little naive as I was developing my political ideology .

1965… Was a good year as I remember it. I was still a hippy at heart but the free love thing passed me by,,,in the night…by a mile… I remember the nation (GB) mourning the death of Sir Winston Churchill..though not everyone !! and the Black community was mourning the death of another great leader..Malcolm X. It wasn’t until years later that I realised what a great man he was…I suppose being white, I wasn’t at the forefront of understanding about Black culture. We live and learn.

1966 … England won the Jules Rimet Trophy..The soccer World Cup…My, what a feeling of Euphoria swamped the nation…The country that gave the world soccer as we know it finally won something !! …we haven’t won anything else since that day !!!

1967 … The Summer of Love … passed me by again!!…never got a whiff 0f it at all !!

1968 … The Prague Spring uprising was brutally crushed by the Soviet Army, who were getting very good at crushing the Eastern Block uprisings before they really got going ……. That was the year I joined the British Army…a Cavalry regiment… the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary’s Own) … Chieftain tanks … That took up the next ten years of my life … Missed the Punk era completely !!! …and so began my war… not a shooting war, with the exception of a couple of tours of duty in Northern Island, but the COLD WAR which at times was just as scary as a shooting war….

1969 … The Moon landing … watched it live whilst on duty guarding a nuclear weapons storage facility (allegedly ) somewhere in deepest West Germany. I can’t describe how thrilled I was at that achievement…breathtaking !! and of course WOODSTOCK … wasn’t there but my God!! did I wish I was !!

1972… Dark days in Northern Ireland …. Internment without trial, and the debacle that was ‘Bloody Sunday’…. I don’t suppose we will ever get to the bottom of that but it was the first time I came face to face with hatred aimed at me and my uniform after that affair. Then I remember, the Massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games…and watched it unfold on TV…grim viewing indeed.

1973 … The first space station was launched, Skylab , and who could not forget Tricky Dickie and the Watergate scandal … how embarrassingthat must have been for the White House !! Nixon resigns the following year.

1975 … Saw the end of the Vietnam War, which for me showed the absolute madness of politicians who poured countless young Americans into the mincer of a war that could not possibly be won, no matter how technologically advanced they were, a dark time in the history of the USA and Vietnam.

1978 … The wonder, and the protests, when the first test tube baby was born.

1979 … That dreadful woman, Maggie Thatcher became the Prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and proceeded to destroy the Trade Union movement and attack the working class at every turn. Enough said about that woman…she sure left her claw marks on the lives of millions.

1980’s … saw the eruption of Mount St Helens, and like most modern disasters we watched it on TV. …. The birth of SOLIDARITY in the shipyards ofGdansk, led by the Charismatic Lech Walesa ….. The space shuttle made it’s first orbital flight and the FALKLANDS WAR IN 1982…so many lives lost…… !984 saw the start of the year long Miners strike, the strongest Union inn the UK crushed by Thatcher and the American imported hatchet man McGregor…dark days indeed for Britain’s working class……1986 saw the Space Shuttle ‘Challenger’ disaster and also the Chernobyl nuclear disaster….. The next Really big event occurred in 1989 when the BERLIN WALL Came down … my god that was a shock !!! the fall Of the SOVIET UNION and the wall happened so fast. I really never believed that would happen in my life time, and of course it led to the REUNIFICATION of GERMANY in 1990 …never thought I would live to see that either !!

Well those are just a few things I remember making an impact on my life these past 67 years…Many I haven’t mentioned, like my marriage, kids and grand kids… that’s not to say they don’t matter, they do, greatly…as did the deaths of people I loved, they mattered too but I think I was already shaped by world events by then. I hope I haven’t bored you silly with the procession of facts, but it is out of the way now, done and dusted. I feel I may have missed out on some momentous events, but they escape my memory for now. No doubt I will remember them tomorrow or the day after. One thing I can promise you though ….. next year on the 68th anniversary of my birth, I will NOT write another epic like this one. Goodnight peeps, stay safe.

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Here I am, 0330hrs and wide awake… I was in bed for about 2100hrs. I had watched two episodes of the Game of Thrones (season 4…I am a late starter !!)..nothing much on TV so I accompanied my better half to the boudoir for some sleep…no sleep available…so I read for about an hour, felt my eyelids drooping and swapped the Kindle for my MP3 player and went off with the fairies accompanied by a Pink Floyd playlist I had compiled for these very occasions. I reached ‘Comfortably Numb’ and realised I wasn’t….no sleep in me at all !! Persevered for another hour with an eclectic mix of everything from the Beatles, opera, Floyd and pop to Jazz and blues classics….still no sleep….So! I thought, get a cup of Java, a Hob Nob biscuit and have a go at reading a few of the blogs I follow on wordpress.com, get some inspiration in lieu of a visit from Hypnos and his son Morpheus….

That magical writer, TERRY PRATCHETT Sadly no longer on this earthly plane as he passed in March this year, a victim of Altzheimers, In his Discworld novel ‘SOURCERY’ famously described ‘Inspiration’ as (Quote)…… “It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There’s a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer’s head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist’s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different.

This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn’t. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss.

Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one.

For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck.

By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry.

Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.”

― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

…Rather a long winded Quote, but to get the full feel of his words it was necessary (Thank God for spell check..I can never spell necessary !!!).

So was I struck by one of these cosmic ‘inspiration particles’ ??? Methinks not. Rather, I am bored to the point of distraction and haven’t an ounce of sleep in my body so in parting I would like to say to HYPNOS and his wayward son MORPHEUS...”I don’t need you tonight BOG OFF !! … I have my WordPress Blog to comfort me!!!….I think I’ll read a bit more…or just get up and treat whats left of this morning (it’s 0345hrs now) as just a dark period of wakefulness and have a VERY long breakfast ….Good Night Peeps, sleep well, and to all fellow bloggers…”Happy Blogging”